Surrounded by Psychopaths
How to Protect Yourself from Being Manipulated and Exploited in Business (and in Life) [The Surrounded by Idiots Series]
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3.9 • 8 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Part of the bestselling Surrounded by Idiots series!
#1 internationally bestselling author Thomas Erikson shows readers how to identify and avoid the psychopaths around them.
Charming, charismatic, and delightful or manipulative, self-serving, and cunning? Psychopaths are both and that’s exactly what makes them dangerous. Bestselling author of the international phenomenon Surrounded by Idiots, Thomas Erikson reveals how to identify the psychopaths in your life and combat their efforts to control and manipulate.
Using the same simple four-color system of behavior classification that made Surrounded by Idiots so popular, Surrounded by Psychopaths teaches readers how to deal with psychopaths in their lives by becoming aware of their own behavior and their weaknesses. Vivid example stories illustrate ways that psychopaths can take advantage of various behavior types, helping readers identify their own weaknesses and be proactive about protecting themselves. Erikson outlines some of the most common forms of manipulation used by psychopaths—and others—to influence those around them. Since manipulation can often be a feature of ordinary, non-psychopathic relationships, the book also includes practical methods and techniques to help readers confront controlling people and rehabilitate negative relationships into mutually respectful ones.
By understanding your behavior as well as the tendencies and strategies of psychopaths, Surrounded by Psychopaths will teach you to protect yourself from manipulative influence in your workplace, social life, and family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Leadership coach Erikson (Surrounded by Idiots) devotes this unsettling and occasionally odd book to putting readers on their guard against the manipulative psychopaths "walking around among us just like everybody else." There are a lot of these "predators in human form," according to Erikson, perhaps "between 2 and 4 percent of the population." Warning that "after you read this book, you might find it difficult to sleep at night," Erikson clearly aims to titillate as well as educate, and the former aim tends to undercut the seriousness of the enterprise, as do the plentiful, and self-serving, references to his previous book. Nonetheless, he does provide plenty of supporting research he's conducted into his subject, particularly the 20 key items on the psychopathy checklist, including "glib and superficial charm," "callousness and lack of empathy," and a "grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self." The book also adds the topical note that there are undoubtedly a "large number of psychopaths in very high positions in the governments of many countries." Some readers may be, as Erikson hopes, both entertained and enlightened, but more will be left unsure what to make of this.
